Recently, I've been watching the star wars movies for the first time (In chronological order, starting with phantom menace). This movie was a lot of fun. It's like 2 hrs long, which is usually something that makes me not enjoy a movie, because that's a lot of sitting and struggling to pay attention if I'm not entirely invested, but this movie felt like it actually had 2 hrs worth of interesting content and had it been shorter things wouldn't have had enough time to breathe. I was pretty much invested the whole time. Because the film came out in 1999 it was super visually interesting to me too, I really like slightly jank 3d CGi in sci fi, it's why I like 2000s era doctor who's visuals a lot more than more recent seasons of the show. Old cgi with it's janky movement and uncanny shading and textures is so creepy and alien looking. Sure it's not super realistic but if I'm watching an alien movie I want it to be a little more on the whimsical side, personally.
My favourite bit was the 'pod racing' segment, I think. I like how there was pretty much no music for a good chunk of time, it let you listen to the sounds of the machines and watch the race yourself, rather than loud dramatic music and keeping it short to keep people watching. The movie never felt like it was desperate to hold your attention, which was a nice change from the other films I've seen lately.
Overall, pretty good. I always go into popular things with low expectations for some reason, I think I assume they won't live up to the hype. But I am consistently proven wrong, and this movie was no exception to that.
